SpaceX Reports Its First Earnings Tuesday — And a $100 Billion Lock-Up Waits Two Days Later

SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) steps in front of public investors for the first time on Tuesday, August 4, when the company reports second-quarter results after the closing bell. The debut arrives at an awkward moment. Shares priced at $135 in June’s record-setting IPO, spiked to an intraday high of $225.64 on June 16, and have since given back more than half that peak — closing Friday at $108.37, roughly 20% below the offering price. Investors now get their first hard look at whether the fundamentals justify a valuation that briefly approached $3 trillion and today sits near $1.4 trillion.

Key Points

• Report date: Tuesday, August 4, after market close. Elon Musk is expected to join the call.
• Revenue consensus: $6.82 billion to $6.90 billion, up sharply from $4.69 billion in Q1.
• Earnings consensus: An adjusted loss near $0.23 per share, narrowing from Q1’s $1.19 loss. Adjusted EBITDA is pegged around $2.0 billion.
• Lock-up expiration: Up to 911.5 million shares become eligible for sale on Thursday, August 6 — more than 1.6 times the current free float of roughly 555 million shares. Another 319 million follow about a week later.
• Stock position: Down more than 50% from its June peak and about 20% below the $135 IPO price.
• Street view: Morgan Stanley maintains a $300 price target. Profitability is not expected until 2027.

Revenue Should Show a Sharp Sequential Jump

Analysts expect SpaceX to post between $6.82 billion and $6.90 billion in second-quarter revenue, a substantial climb from the $4.69 billion the company generated in Q1. That growth rate matters more than the absolute number. Because SpaceX carries a valuation built almost entirely on forward expectations, the market will read the sequential trajectory as a proxy for how quickly the business can scale into its multiple.
Musk added fuel to those expectations over the weekend. Responding to a post suggesting SpaceX could add revenue equivalent to all of Tesla within 12 to 24 months, he replied approvingly — a claim that would imply $95 billion to $104 billion in incremental annual revenue based on Tesla’s latest sales. Whether management endorses anything resembling that pace on the call will shape the reaction more than the printed results.

Starlink Anchors the Model

Starlink remains the steadiest revenue engine in the portfolio. The satellite broadband unit finished Q1 with 10.3 million consumer subscribers across personal broadband, aviation communications, mobile networks, and government contracts. Morgan Stanley projects that figure reaching 12 million in Q2, with average revenue per user near $65.50 per month.
Consequently, subscriber additions and ARPU will function as the report’s stability test. Recurring, predictable subscription revenue offsets the lumpiness of launch contracts — and gives skeptical investors something to underwrite that does not depend on a Mars timeline.

AI Spending Explains the Loss

The bottom line tells a different story than the top line. SpaceX widened its net loss to $4.2 billion in the most recent quarter, up from $528 million a year earlier, as capital expenditures accelerated. AI infrastructure spending alone reached $7.7 billion, while the Space division absorbed another $1.1 billion in new plants and equipment.
That spending traces directly to the company’s February acquisition of xAI, since renamed SpaceXAI, which brought sprawling data centers and a power plant in the Greater Memphis area under the SpaceX umbrella. Google, Anthropic, and Reflection have already contracted to rent excess compute capacity from those facilities.
However, the timing works against the story. Investors have grown increasingly skeptical that AI infrastructure spending across the market will generate returns commensurate with the cash consumed. SpaceX now reports into that skepticism rather than ahead of it. Guidance for 2026 and 2027 capital expenditures — plus any detail on the plan to launch low-cost computing satellites that process AI workloads in orbit — will therefore carry outsized weight.

The Lock-Up Is the Larger Overhang

Supply, not fundamentals, may ultimately drive the near-term tape. SpaceX structured a staggered lock-up rather than the conventional 180-day cliff, and the first earnings release triggers the opening tranche. On Thursday, August 6, up to 911.5 million shares become eligible for sale — a block worth roughly $100 billion and more than 1.6 times the roughly 555 million shares currently trading freely. An additional 319 million shares unlock about a week after that.
An extra 10% could free up if the stock closes at least 30% above the IPO price on five of the ten trading days heading into the report. At current levels, that threshold is out of reach.
Some analysts argue the drawdown has already discounted the supply risk. Others see the unlock as the reason shares keep testing the $100 level, with technical support sitting in the $85 to $90 range if the print disappoints.

What to Watch on the Call

Beyond the headline numbers, four items will move the stock:
1. Starlink subscriber growth and ARPU — the recurring-revenue foundation.
2. Capex guidance for 2026 and 2027 — how much longer the AI build-out consumes cash.
3. Starship flight cadence — the vehicle completed its 13th flight test in July, and the Street wants timing on flight 14 plus progress toward commercial operations.

4. Musk’s commentary — historically a larger driver of near-term volatility than the financials themselves.
Notably, SpaceX opened investor questions through a new Grok-powered platform that let shareholders vote on topics for management to address. Submissions ranged from AI infrastructure and Starlink expansion to whether Starship could be painted pink.